Welcome back to the Tech Policy Podcast.

I'm Corbyn Barthold.

I, of course, am usually your host.

Today, I am the guest.

I appeared on Balal Syed's Rthinking antitrust podcast, which, like this podcast, is put on by

Tech Freedom, to discuss the president's power of removal.

Does the president have the power to fire officers in the executive branch at will as a matter of constitutional right?

Or may Congress give such officials for cause removal protections?

This is a fascinating subject touching on the founding era and the New Deal and the rise of the

administrative state and recent Supreme Court precedent. I really enjoyed working through it

all with the law. We focused on the Federal Trade Commission and a specific Supreme

Court decision, Humphreys executor, for reasons that

will become clear in the episode. This removal debate is so interesting. It is at this crossroads

of questions of political accountability and expertise and complex systems. It has long interested me deeply. Unfortunately, though,

this is far from some mere academic discussion. Removal is going to be hotly debated in the courts

because we have a presidential administration that is currently seeking to

push its powers to the limit and beyond everywhere all at once. So the behavior of the current

administration casts something of a shadow on Ballal and my discussion. At any rate, I thought this was really

worthwhile, and I am excited to share this episode with you. I, of course, cover antitrust semi-regularly

on the tech policy podcast. The way I would put it is that I speak the language of antitrust. I am fluent in antitrustees,

and so I can get by. But the true expert on this subject is Balal, former FTC official. He gets the real

movers and shakers in the antitrust world onto his show.

...